Let Your Beard Grow Say Women

Let your beard grow almost sounds like a song by the Bellamy Brothers. It's not a song but the way women want their men.A down under study by a group of researchers in Australia shows that women prefer men with heavy stubble over clean-shaven guys and guys sporting light stubble or full beards.

And when straight guys were asked about other men, full beards and heavy stubble beat out light stubble and the clean-shaven look.

The way they did it was to show photos of 10 smiling men to 177 heterosexual men and 351 women. Each guy in the photos were shown with 4 different beard lengths.

The researchers then asked the women and men to rate the men in the photos according to their attractiveness, finding heavy stubble to be the clear winner among women.

"Our findings confirm that beardedness affects judgments of male socio-sexual attributes and suggest that an intermediate level of beardedness is most attractive while full-bearded men may be perceived as better fathers who could protect and invest in offspring," the researchers concluded.